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We Win! TIME Magazine Officially Recants ("Eat Butter...Don't Blame Fat"), And Quotes Me
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June 25, 2014
8:38 am
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First-Eater
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It's been 30 years and three months since TIME Magazine's infamous "Cholesterol...And Now The Bad News" cover featured the bacon-and-eggs frowny face—the arresting image which firmly institutionalized fat and cholesterol-phobia in America:

Meanwhile, my parents recently visited something even rarer than a paleo-friendly doctor—they visited a doctor whose office features current magazines in the waiting room. In it, they spotted the June 23, 2014 issue of TIME magazine, featuring the following cover story:

Yes, the cover reads:

Eat Butter.
Scientists labeled fat the…
June 25, 2014
9:44 am
eddie watts
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I am so glad to see a new article!

looking forward to new stuff soon.
(sadly I have nothing new to add than this)

June 25, 2014
10:07 am
Ash Simmonds
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On the Ancel Keys note, he cops plenty from "our" crew and rightly so, but really the blame lies with the people in charge of education and policy who were either dumb or corrupt enough to accept and spread assertions without critical thought and verification.

BTW, he wasn't always the bad guy:

--> https://twitter.com/AshSimmonds/status/474763809773469696

"Keyes had then written me that if pemmican contained no other ingredients than beef, fat and lean, he thought as high as 86 per cent of calories from fat would probably be all right." ~ Stefansson

June 25, 2014
11:47 am
js290
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If these so-called "scientists" believe in natural selection and evolution, then the "paleo diet" should have been the default null hypothesis.

Sciencism (science as an ideology) is not much more than modern, secular religion.

Keep up the good work, J!

June 25, 2014
1:03 pm
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Halifax, UK
Gnoll
Forum Posts: 364
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Whoop!

Living in the Ice Age
http://livingintheiceage.pjgh.co.uk

June 25, 2014
2:08 pm
Eric
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I think what's happening now is that instead of realizing that the war on fat was a big lie/scam, the general public is more confused and distrustful than ever and I keep hearing people say you shouldn't put much stock in any of this conflicting research any more, and that everything is "bad for you" to some extent so just eat whatever as long as it's in moderation.

June 25, 2014
2:17 pm
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Halifax, UK
Gnoll
Forum Posts: 364
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I have to say, that sounds so wishy-washy ...

How much neat alcohol is moderate? How much heroin? How much sugar?

Come on ...

Modern food did not exist little more than a couple of generations ago. There were no "healthy fats", just animal fats. Sugar was scarce, sweet foods were eaten as real treats, no packets of whatever, breakfast was hearty real food (or something like oats, no sugar ... salt and whisky).

I digress ...

The way food has been flipped on its head in the last 60 years is untrue. It is now so imbued in our psyche to accept non-food as food and find real food intolerant. More so, this notion of moderation is insidious.

No, it is NOT about moderation. It is about real food and timing. It is also about not slobbing around, engaging in meaningful activity and sleeping properly. The last 2.5M years of human history show us the way ... the last 60 have been the start of our ruin.

Living in the Ice Age
http://livingintheiceage.pjgh.co.uk

June 25, 2014
2:57 pm
Eric
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@Paul Halliday - I agree 100%, that's what I was trying to say: "this notion of moderation is insidious", thanks for condensing it into one sentence! I would go so far to say it's no accident either, I think we'll see some backlash and talking heads on both sides, the low fat, vegan crowd, vs. those mentioned above, just to confuse people even more.

June 25, 2014
5:43 pm
ValerieD
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Hi,

you probably want to correct this typo:
"As a resiult, the health of Americans will continue to suffer."
("resiult" should be "result")

There is also a problem (theirs, not yours) in the quote from the study titled "High ratio of triglycerides to HDL-cholesterol predicts extensive coronary disease." The p-value for triglycerides cannot work. I checked the source, and your quotation is correct, but still, the p-value doesn't work. Maybe it deserves a [sic].

June 25, 2014
10:12 pm
Fred Wilkey
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David Kessler, in "The End of Overeating," discussed the issue of "hyper-palatability." Big Food has succeeded in separating flavor from nutritional value, creating high-flavor foods that push us past satiety. For most of the world still, and for the developed countries until less than 100 years ago, food was simple, plain, BORING. Treats were occasional - really treats. Big Food has successfully pushed the idea of food as entertainment - every bite must be a thrill. Every diet book devotes its last 3rd to wonderful, tasty recipes. As a psychologist, I despair of reversing this trend.

June 26, 2014
8:33 am
Margaretrc
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Great article, as usual. Bravo that you were quoted, even if you didn't get credit for the quote.

June 26, 2014
10:29 am
Fred Wilkey
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Just came across a 2004 article from a Sports Nutrition journal which states "There is no clear requirement for dietary carbohydrates in adult humans."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129159/

June 26, 2014
10:37 am
Eric
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@ Fred Wilkey - The whole idea of recipes just over complicates food for most people. We would do better to learn general cooking techniques with a few specifics for dealing with certain common ingredients instead of sending people out to buy a bunch of exotic ingredients with the hope that following the steps in the recipe will somehow magically result in a wonderful gourmet dish, which rarely happens and those left over exotic ingredients just get tossed out after they've gone bad. Just the other day an elderly gentleman was asking me what you're supposed to do with ramps, and like what to do with the green part. Anyone with general cooking skills wouldn't be confused by an unfamiliar green alum like that and could easily incorporate them into almost any savory dish during cooking and/or as garnish.

June 26, 2014
6:19 pm
Ro Solar
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Get back to basics. Wait till you're really hungry. Squat down with almost nothing on, a robe is perfect. No underwear. Open that tin of wild salmon. Devour. Hunger ends, what's next? Cooking Zero.

June 26, 2014
6:57 pm
Chad Musgrove
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Love your article. As a triathlete that was a carboholic, it took a long time for me to ditch the carbs and eat a high fat diet. I wish I would have done this years ago! My issue though is my incredibly high cholesterol. I started eating low carb high fat because I have come to believe something that you briefly touched of in your write up: high cholesterol / LDL is not a good predictor of heart disease. With a father and grandfather that had their first heart attacks in their 40's, I'm very concerned and monitoring my cholesterol closely. After 6 months on a high fat diet, my total cholesterol and LDL went up (12% and 11% respectively), but my triglycerides dropped 48%, and my HDL rose 68%! I see this as very positive, and having decreased my risk for developing heart disease. While I believe that the TG to HDL ratio is way more important, and my ratio dropped from a 4.3 to 1'ish - I have not seen anything about whether or not my excellent ratio "over rides" any risk from my still very high cholesterol. Would be interested in your thoughts... http://www.ironmanorbust.com/low-carb-high-fat-6-month-results/

Thanks

June 27, 2014
3:13 am
Jasmine
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I am in the same boat as Chad above. VLC diet, mainly fatty meat, some vegetation and my Chol and LDL risen to 8.7 and 5.6 respectively, trig dropped to 1.3. My T/Chol/HDL ratio same as previous at 3.5. A1c down to near perfect at 4.8 but am I risking heart disease with these rising lipids or are these results par for the course with this type of eating?

June 27, 2014
5:04 am
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eddie:

Thank you! More articles are coming.

Ash:

I'm sure that one of the reasons Ancel Keys got away with so much was because he had done quite a bit of solid work up to that point (e.g. the Minnesota Starvation Experiment).

js290:

Exactly. Paleo is the only null hypothesis that makes any sense. Everything else is, as you say, scientism -- inertia, politics, and/or religion dressed in a lab coat.

For instance, the fact that the anthropological community has, for the most part, attacked the Paleo movement is a damning indictment that protecting their intellectual turf is more important to them than advancing the state of human knowledge. Christina "Paleo is stupid but eat Paleo" Warinner is just the most irritating example.

Eric, Paul:

"Everything in moderation" is only a good strategy when you have no information.

Should we consume cyanide in moderation, when we know it's a poison? Should we moderate our consumption of grass-fed beef because we're worried about suffering a Twinkie deficiency?

I understand that people, at some point, throw up their hands and say "The experts don't know what they're talking about" -- but we all have to eat something! At some level, everyone falls back on a certain set of assumptions about what is healthy and what is unhealthy. Beans and whole-grain bread are healthy, red meat and butter are unhealthy. And so on. I hope this article will help change those unconscious assumptions.

ValerieD:

I'm usually foot at catching typos myself, but I missed that one. Good eye.
Re: the p-value, I assume it's far too small. Isn't the one for TG also too small?

Fred Wilkey:

That's a solid article debunking the standard myths about low-carbohydrate diets.

Moving to "The End Of Overeating": The problem with the Kessler hypothesis is that it fails trivially in the presence of the data. The prevalence of obesity took a massive and steep upturn starting in 1980. Yet there is no evidence that food suddenly became tasty in 1980, and much evidence to the contrary. "Low-fat" foods do not taste better than the original full-fat versions. French fries in canola oil do not taste better than French fries in tallow. Almost every currently popular junk food was popular before 1970 -- in many cases, before WWII. And so on.

I've spent a great deal of time researching hunger and the reward system: instead of rehashing my conclusions, I'll point you to my 2012 AHS presentation (video, text and slides), where I explore in detail the topics mentioned above, as well as summarizing the current state of scientific knowledge on hunger, satiation, satiety, and slippery concepts such as "palatability" and "reward". I hope you'll find it educational and useful!

Margaretrc:

Yes, I did a double-take when I saw Dr. Mozaffarian use the Skittles analogy!

Eric:

It is an indictment of our educational system that we don't graduate high school with any idea of how to feed ourselves. I don't even mean "nutrition", I mean "knowing how to physically prepare food".

Ro:

I agree that eating doesn't have to be complicated. I've been known to eat raw hamburger straight out of the package. However, it is a sublime pleasure to eat well-spiced and prepared food. And it is important to remember that pleasure is neither unhealthy nor fattening!

Chad:

First, Gr*show spams the same studies and comments everywhere, conveniently omitting those which show results he doesn't like (e.g. only the group with the highest SFA intake showed a reduction in CIMT).

Also, cherry-picked anecdotes prove nothing. If you mention Seth Roberts and Dr. Su, you also have to mention Wolfgang Lutz (died at 97), Buckminster Fuller (died at 88 -- and yes, he ate almost exclusively meat since his fifties), Art De Vany (76, still alive, and still able to kick your ass), Vilhjalmur Stefansson (died at 83)...

Furthermore, one might note that Barry Groves died at the average age of death for males in the USA -- and, unlike the average American, was a nationally competitive archer until about two years before his death. In contrast, the average American male only makes it to age 64 without suffering either heart disease, cancer, or diabetes, and loses basic mobility six years before dying. (Study linked from this article.)

Let's not even discuss potential p-values on a sample size of seven...

*** NOTE: NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. You are responsible for your own decisions. ***

Meanwhile, back to your numbers: while at TC of 350ish is certainly cause for concern, the fact that it didn't change much on an LCHF diet vs. a standard "healthy" diet means you probably can't do a great deal about it.

Most importantly, though, a standard "cholesterol test" doesn't actually measure LDL! It "imputes" it (read: guesses at it) based on a formula known as the Friedewald equation, so your measurements should all read "estimated LDL" instead of LDL:
LDL = TC - HDL - TG/5
The observant reader will note that, simply by reducing your triglycerides, your "LDL" (scare quotes intentional) will increase. In your case, your TG went down by 74, which increased your "LDL" by 15…almost half of the total increase! And the resulting 5% difference between the two "LDL" measurements is well within the margin of error of the test.

Then, a 12% variation in TC is also well within the margin of error of the test:

"In a recent survey, CAP sent a blood sample with a cholesterol level of 265 to 5,434 labs. Even after excluding about five percent of the results which were far off the target, the remaining results ranged from a low of 229 to a high of 312--as much as 18 percent off the target value, and a total difference of more than 80." (link)

"During a recent weekly lipid testing mania, my lab technician performed two (and occasionally three) tests on the same sample. Variations were as much as 10% between the test results, sometimes greater." (link)

So your TC and "LDL" are the same within the margin of error of the test…and your TG and HDL show a significant reduction in risk.

Note that unlike Jimmy Moore, I'm not confident that TC of 350 is harmless…but it's not clear you can do anything about it, so you may as well concentrate on the TG and HDL you apparently can do something about. I wonder if Gr*show would recommend you go back to your previous "healthy" diet -- which would leave TC and "LDL" essentially unchanged but dramatically worsen TG and HDL?

Basically, given your family history, odds are that you will die prematurely of heart disease. I'm very sorry about that. But from the data you've given me, it seems like going low-fat might harm more than help. (A final note: after you've been LCHF for a while, you may find you can tolerate carbs better, say 15-20% instead of <10%.) Frankly, the best thing you could do for your health at this point is to stop running tris and marathons, and stick to things that don't physically beat you up so much (e.g. cycling, swimming, weightlifting, etc.) Chronic long-distance running correlates with heart damage in multiple studies...

Thanks, everyone, for the support!

JS

June 27, 2014
7:15 am
ValerieD
Guest

The weird p-value is this one.

In the da Luz study: “The odds ratios ... triglycerides, 1.7, 95%CI (0.94–3.08), p = 0.986;"

The p-value should be much smaller. The 95% interval barely includes 1, so the p-value must be barely above 0.05.

June 27, 2014
10:48 am
tam
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There's nothing wrong with fat, and there's nothing wrong with carbs.

June 27, 2014
1:27 pm
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UPDATE: my original Friedewald calculation were incorrect! I blame Wikipedia, which appears to use an incorrect value for the TG constant. See the original source:

Clinical Chemistry June 1972 vol. 18 no. 6 499-502
Estimation of the Concentrationof Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesteroi ln Plasma, Without Use of the Preparative Ultracentrifuge
William T. Friedewald, Robert I. Levy, and Donald S. Fredrickson
http://www.clinchem.org/content/18/6/499.full.pdf+html

The appropriate equations are:
mmol/L: LDLe = TC - HDL - TG/2.2
mg/dL: LDLe = TC - HDL - TG/5

Result: Chad's "LDL" (calculated LDL) increased more than I originally calculated, which makes the difference even less significant! I'm revising the comment accordingly.

Jasmine:

Without a full set of numbers and dates for each reading (TC, HDL, TG, estimated LDL), and some idea of what you ate before and what you mean by "LCHF", I can't possibly speculate.

However, it is important to note that every set of associative data we have show that, for women, mortality decreases as TC increases, apparently without limit! That's right: higher TC for women is always associated with higher survival rates.

The curve is different for men, for whom the minimum risk appears to be between 220 and 260, with the risk increasing steeply below 200 and somewhat less steeply over 280. (Though this is all associative data, and it's not clear that high cholesterol "causes" anything.)

ValerieD:

Good catch. It's important to remember that just because it was published in a Peer-Reviewed Scientific Journal(™), it's not necessarily unshakable truth!

JS

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